Iran (like US) backs Arab repression

US officials say Iran is dispatching increasing numbers of trainers and advisers—including members of its elite Quds Force—into Syria to help crush anti-government demonstrations that are threatening to topple Iran’s most important ally in the region. The influx of Iranian manpower is adding to a steady stream of aid from Tehran that includes not only weapons and riot gear but also sophisticated surveillance equipment that is helping Syrian authorities track down opponents through their Facebook and Twitter accounts, the sources said. Iranian-assisted computer surveillance is believed to have led to the arrests of hundreds of Syrians seized from their homes in recent weeks.

Israel's Haaretz provides further details—although it maddeningly fails to provide the name of its source:

Hezbollah forces are entering Syria and helping forces there suppress anti-government protests, Israel Radio quoted a Lebanese parliament member as saying on Sunday. The parliament member, speaking to a Lebanese radio station, said that the Lebanese army can not prevent this from happening. He noted that the Syrian army has, like the Hezbollah troops, breached the border with Lebanon. There is a fear that Syrian forces will attempt to kidnap refugees who fled to Lebanon to escape violence from the Syrian government, the parliament member said.

We have no opinion on the veracity of these claims, which well could have been created by Israel or the US State Department. We have already noted the Obama administration's hypocrisy in making much of the repression in Syria and Libya while (with only token admonitions to the client despots) backing that in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and (until they were overthrown) Egypt and Tunisia. We've also noted Iran's hypocrisy in cheering on the Egyptian protesters while repressing its own. We've similarly noted the identical double standard of the sectarian idiot left in the United States.

Washington, Tehran and Tel Aviv alike (as well as their sectarian-left and neocon cheerleaders) all seek to manipulate the Arab Spring—heretofore a unified struggle against entrenched dictators, regardless of whether their political stripes are pro-Western or "anti-imperialist"—into a Great Power proxy game. Lets hope they all fall flat on their faces.

About the Author

Bill Weinberg is an award-winning 25-year veteran journalist in the fields of human rights, indigenous peoples, ecology and war. He is the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico, now available from Verso Books, and War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America (Zed Books, 1991).